


into the sea of waking dreams (will you still remember me?)

by imaginedecember



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginedecember/pseuds/imaginedecember
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was a repeat occurrence. Michael shows up, Michael breaks down. But this time around, it's different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	into the sea of waking dreams (will you still remember me?)

**Author's Note:**

> The title are lyrics from the song Possession by Evans Blue. 
> 
> Note: This has mentions of child abuse, swearing and possibly other offensive language. I apologize for anything that is triggering or offensive in any way.
> 
> This takes place during the New York and New Jersey days. Also, it ends pretty abruptly, my apologies. For me, that's the painful side effect of Raychael.

Ray was unsure as to why Michael would hop on a train in the dead of night just to come to his apartment to use his bathroom. And to seal the deal, it was to shave off his curls. Damn it, Ray really liked his curls (he loved ruffling them, tugging them, smelling them right after a shower - just everything about them).

“What are you doing, Michael?”

It seemed to be the one sentence that remained a constant between them. Sometimes names were switched but that was the repeated offender.

_What are you doing?_

_What’s wrong?_

_Why are you doing this (to yourself, to us)?_

“They’re getting in the way.”

A typical answer. One that didn’t quite match but nothing with Michael ever made sense. There was always a hidden motive. Ray wondered if there was a hidden reason as to why Michael was still with him. He wondered if Michael was using him to get away from whatever bullshit he was dealing with in New Jersey (that he would never speak of but every tale was etched into his skin and the aches in his muscles - tear stains didn’t exactly go away no matter how many times you brushed them aside, scrubbed at your cheeks - no matter how much pride you have or how craftily you lie - Ray wasn’t stupid and he just wished that Michael would stop treating him as such).

Ray chose not to comment on that, simply deciding to follow Michael into the bathroom. Smaller space. Easy to corner him. Maybe he’d finally get an answer out of him. 

“Ray, where’s-?”

Michael could barely even breath as hands swung him around and slammed his chest into the bathroom wall. Ray was hovering over him, his panting the only sound as he wrestled to keep Michael’s hands in his grasp. 

“Stop, Michael,” Ray pleaded. 

It felt like they were both shattering. 

Ray was sick of being used as a place to vent.

Michael was just sick of everything (except Ray but god, the younger couldn’t see that, couldn’t understand - and how, then, could he understand the parts of him that still confused him? - how could he tell Ray anything?).

“I can’t.” It came out stuttered and hoarse. Ray toyed with his curls, wondering if Michael had been screaming and what at. He wondered if his skull still ached from when he yanked at his hair in frustration, exhaustion, sadness, whichever. He wondered if that was when Michael got the bright idea to shave off his curls. Maybe if the hair went away, all the ache would go too. 

Ray wasn’t stupid. 

And Michael was slowly learning that.

“You can.” 

It was too simple. 

Michael squirmed underneath Ray’s hold, testing the strength of it and asking himself when Ray’s hands turned to claws against his skin. It didn’t take much to throw off the younger. He simply kicked his foot back, landing square on Ray’s kneecap. 

He ignored his cry of pain (when did he become like an abuser? when did he become somebody who used someone else? when did he forget what it meant exactly to be human?) and reached for the bathroom cabinets above the sink. Clippers. Clippers. He chanted the words underneath his breath until he found them. 

There was no sound of triumphant, only a whimper as he pressed the clippers to his hair. He watched as they pooled in the sink, recently clean if he knew Ray. And he was just going to make it dirty again. 

That was what he was. 

A ruiner of such precious things. 

He didn’t expect an arm around his waist nor hands shakily grabbing for the clippers. 

Michael wanted to resist. He wanted to claw, scratch and kick. He wanted this to fucking end already. And with his curls gone, there’d be nothing to grab at. There’d be no memories of the shit he got for them. He kept them for Ray but he did that with a lot of things when it came to Ray. But he wasn’t sure that he could keep his heart going for Ray. Did he ever give Ray his heart to begin with?

As it felt it shatter under the weight of Ray’s crying and low whispered promises, he knew that he had given his heart to Ray as soon as he met him. But Ray didn’t know the darkness it held. Didn’t know of the locked rooms. 

Michael wasn’t too sure where the key was anymore. 

He crumbled against the sink, the clippers slipping out of their joint grasp and clattering on to the tile. His knees skidded until he pulled them up to his chest, leaning his forehead against the cabinet underneath the sink. Ray was still holding him (still holding the pieces of him).

And, really, this seemed too much like routine. 

Michael would come over at least twice a week and one of those times would be when he would break. Because Ray was safe. Ray would hold him despite the ugliness and shame that made his soul reek. Ray would still be there for him. And then Michael saw. He was using the younger, using him as some device to turn his problems on. 

Because Michael Jones was a fucking coward and he didn’t deserve anybody, especially Ray Narvaez Jr. 

How did it turn out like this?

It started with Xbox dates, shooting each other in the face and raging when Ray won because that red faced monster was well acquainted with Michael but if he took it out in video games, it’d disappear and no one would question if there was something wrong - except Ray. Ray was always the exception. 

He didn’t know how could Ray could do it, how the younger could just know. All he had to go by was Michael’s voice through static crackled headphones and, occasionally, face to face interactions on Skype. Michael was good at schooling his expression, at ensuring that nothing slipped through (you just had to be tough in New Jersey - you just had to survive in the Jones’ household). But Ray was so fucking good at knowing despite all those barriers (those useless guards). 

When Michael’s voice was hoarse (from screaming earlier in the day, not from two seconds ago). When Michael’s anger felt too true. When it felt like Michael was whipping him with his words (Michael teased but when did teasing turn into salt stung insults?) He swore that he wasn’t taking it out on Ray but what then would he call his actions?

Ray was right. 

What in the fuck was he doing?

He was marring a beautiful creature who didn’t deserve this. Humans weren’t meant to be used. They weren’t meant to be punching bags (do you hear me yet, father?). 

Turning around in Ray’s hold, Michael shushed his worries with a firm press of his lips. Ray was trembling in his hold as his hands disappeared under his shirt and smoothed over his stomach. They palmed soft skin in soothing circles, hoping somehow that his warmth and touch would be enough to patch over the wounds that he had caused. 

“I don’t deserve you,” Michael mumbled against the skin of his unmoving lips. Ray couldn’t even kiss him back, couldn’t give Michael that satisfaction of everything being alright. Because it was fucking wasn’t. 

“You don’t.” His voice was taut as his hands tangled themselves in Michael’s t-shirt. Michael was staring at him and he had never gotten this expression. Guards down. The key was in his hands. And Ray was turning the lock. 

“No, I’ve used you to run away from my problems. You were…so happy in the beginning. I ruined that.” 

Michael couldn’t hold Ray’s gaze. Instead he tucked his face in his neck and kissed the warm skin there, trying all his might to gather the strength to reveal these things that had been haunting him for months. 

He remembered when he first met Ray, when he would see him smile and hear his laugh and swear to God or whoever the fuck above that he would kill anyone who would dare take that happiness away. He was sunshine. Like a beacon in Michael’s life. But Michael was the one that had taken that away. And now he saw his expression mirrored in Ray’s eyes and all Michael wanted to do was let his father finally beat him into submission (because for hurting Ray, he deserved it). 

“You didn’t…”

Ray tried to make it better because Michael was both wrong and right. 

“You don’t understand,” Ray tried again. Shaking his head, his fingers clutched tighter at Michael’s shirt and he could have sworn he heard the worn stitches tear. “You were happy in the beginning too and then I just saw you break in front of me. There was nothing I could do but be here for you.”

“But I used you to get away.” 

Michael kept repeating that until one of Ray’s hands unhooked from his shirt and pressed against his mouth. Warm lips kissed the tip of his ear, the voice that whispered into it singing like the birds in the morning. 

“You had no one else to go to, Michael. It’s fine. You know what you did. And you’re apologizing for that.” He paused, his breathy shaky. “I just want to see you happy again, Michael.”

_Why can’t you be happy with me?_

Ray was wrong to assume or ponder such things. 

Pushing away Ray’s hand, Michael dared to lift his head. The solemn expression he saw staring back at him was all too familiar and he was a demon, a monster for putting it there. “You don’t get it, Ray,” he tried. But the words were failing him. Scrambling to pick them up, he pieced them together as best as he could. “New Jersey makes me miserable. It’s fucking bullshit down there and my fucking father thinks he rules the damn planet. He thinks he owns his sons and that they should do as he pleases. I’m not one to take that. And the only thing I could do to get him out of my head was to play games. It felt good to get angry at them. Then I found you…”

And that was it. 

Michael had found Ray. 

He found his sunshine. 

But he had taken that for granted.

“Michael-.”

But Michael was interrupting him, shushing him with a soft kiss before continuing, “I was so scared to message you because having friends was something that I never cared about but something about you just seemed right. So, I messaged you and when we finally started playing and figuring each other out, I knew that I made the right decision. You were perfect.” Michael shrugged as if the information wasn’t melting the younger boy in his hold. He said things so simply, even though they held so much weight. But that was the thing. Michael know how much things could be imperfect and Ray, well, he wasn’t one of those things. “The person you spoke to was the real me, in a sense. The happier me. You reminded me that I had promise.”

Michael remembered how one day, they bonded over Red vs. Blue and watched it for a day straight together. He remembered how Ray mentioned that he was going to try to get a job in the company that made it, to get away from New York and its shitty unemployment days. He remembered how Ray said that Michael should do it too because the way that he raged was really funny sometimes and he always did love how his New Jersey accent carved his swears (and most importantly, his name). It was what made Michael realize that he did have potential and that making his own channel would be a good start. None of that would be without Ray’s pushing that he was good (good enough for Ray). 

And what did he do to Ray in turn?

Wincing, he tried to continue on but his voice was struggling under the weight of his sorrows (and the truth). Inhaling deeply, he spoke, “But my father was ruining it and he could sense that I was trying to get out of the house and he didn’t like that. He got worse. And I took that out on you. I used you to get away instead of facing it head on. That was…Ray, I’ll never forgive myself for that. I…like you a lot…,” And truly this was the hardest part. “But I got the job in Texas. They want me down there, Ray. I can get out of all of this.”

_I can stop using you._

When Ray recoiled from him, Michael didn’t know what to do. And neither did Ray. Too many bombshells. He should have waited to tell the younger but he was living on borrowed time in New Jersey. Plus, it’ll separate them and that was what was best. For Ray. He was doing this for Ray.

But how many times was he going to have to repeat that to himself to make it true?

Ray stood and vanished from the bathroom.

Michael didn’t have the heart to go after him. 

But then Ray’s voice came in from the hallway. 

“What are you doing, Michael?”


End file.
